Proposal
by festival-chan loves books
Summary: Naruto, who's been dating Hinata for a year, is going to propose!  Hooray!  The pairings are NaruHina, and the smallest, itsyest, bitsyest, eencyweenyest mention possible of NejiTen Seriously.  It's like three words.  OOC. Fluff.


Naruto looked up at the clear white eyes... the shining dark hair... the proud Hyuuga features. He cleared his throat, and smoothed down his black suit, straightened his orange-and-blue patterned tie (that Hinata gave him on his last birthday), and ran a finger through his yellow hair (gelled in place... Hinata said last week when experimenting with his hair that it was cute when gelled into spikes).

"Hello, Hinata-chan," he said, trying not to sound too desperate, but not too indifferent either. This part was in front of her family, and even though he'd already talked to Hinata's dad, he didn't want to mess it up. He looked straight at the face before him, awaiting a similar greeting from the person standing there.

"Hello, Naruto-kun," said a low, but still tenor, voice (that was sadly nothing like Hinata's soft, high pitched musical one to Naruto's ears).

"How did I do?" asked Naruto breathlessly (as he'd been holding his breath since he'd closed his mouth).

"Just fine."

Naruto began pacing again. He'd been practicing, but he still didn't feel like he was getting it right. So he'd brought the only other dark-haired Byakugan user he knew in the village to help him practice. Unfortunately, Neji wasn't much help. Too quiet and too... Not like Hinata-chan.

"Oh! Oh! How about I try this?" He'd had a new idea. Naruto walked away from Neji and paused. He steeled himself and walked back up again. He was going to say this in front of her family. It had to be _exactly _right.

"Hi, Hinata-chan!" he said cheerfully.

"Hello, Naruto-kun," said Neji, who was making a slight attempt to sound earnest, and not sarcastic, disillusioned, or bored. He decided to throw a verbal curveball at Naruto. "How are you today?"

Naruto's eyes widened. "Oh my gosh, I hadn't thought of what I'd say to that! Oh -" and he uttered a curse so foul that Neji informed him that if he used said curse in front of Hinata, he would be unable to use chakra ever again.

"Sorry, Neji..."

"And as for the question, why don't you just answer it? A simple 'fine, thanks, how are you?' would suffice, I'm sure."

"Oh... Oh, right, yeah, good idea. Okay, let's practice it again."

They began, and when Neji didn't ask how Naruto was, Naruto nearly eviscerated him with a kunai. Luckily for Neji, he dodged, having seen it coming.

"Naruto... Stay calm. If you kill me or my cousin, I'm certain you would have the wrath of the Main Branch to deal with, and they would make sure that you die a horrible, painful death, as does anyone who crosses the Hyuuga."

"Oh."

Neji was silent.

"Let's try it again, shall we?" Naruto repeated the same walk-away-pause-come-back-greet ritual he'd been using before.

"Hello, Naruto-kun. How are you today?"

"I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" Naruto sighed. "Whew! Done. Okay." His eyes lit up. "Hey, Neji! I need you to do Henge jutsu and transform into Hinata-chan! Is that okay?"

Neji performed the appropriate hand signs and a puff of smoke and "poof-"ing noise later, Hinata stood in front of him, wearing her usual clothes.

Naruto took a deep breath.

"Hello, Hinata-chan!" he said.

"Hello, Naruto-kun," said Hinata's high voice.

Naruto fainted. Out cold. Neji, disguised as Hinata, rolled his eyes (which would have frightened anyone who'd seen it. Quiet, demure Hinata Hyuuga rolling her eyes? At Naruto? Gasp.). He leaned over to check Naruto for any medical problems or anything like that. Of course, when he woke up, Naruto woke up to Hinata's face. He fainted again.

"Good thing he didn't try anything," muttered Neji, as he "poof-"ed back to his usual long-haired and stoic (as his fans liked to call it) self.

"Neji!" cried Naruto. "Must... practice!" he said, struggling to get up. Neji put his foot (gently) on Naruto's stomach to keep him from getting up. Naruto needed to lie down for a little while to get calmer. He was practically twitching.

"Sit, boy," said Neji loftily, examining his fingernails above Naruto. "You need to relax. Breathe. All that stuff." He muttered under his breath, and Naruto caught something about "yellow-haired colorblind idiot."

"Who's a yellow-haired colorblind idiot?" asked Naruto obliviously.

"Never mind that, just relax."

Naruto tried to relax. He really did. But all that came to mind were images of Hinata mouthing the word, "no".

He reached into his pocket to make sure the ring was still there. And then lay there for some time, just thinking.

"What kind of ring is it?" asked Neji.

"Diamond." he asked proudly. He'd saved up for months, only eating the normally recommended portion of ramen. Ichiraku and Ayame had nearly called Tsunade for him several times, thinking he was ill, and once or twice he'd been kicked out for impersonating himself.

"Sure, why not." Neji had nothing better to do.

"Look."

Naruto pulled out the tiny black box, gently pulling back the tiny, soft lid. In the sunlight glinted a small diamond on a shiny metal band.

"Nice," said Neji. His cousin would love it.

"I thought it was nice... It wasn't a big honking boulder on a fancy metal circle like some of the others, but it's pretty, and it's simple... I saw her jewelry, some of it, and it was all simple stuff..." Naruto trailed off.

Neji nodded.

"Do you think she'll like it?" asked Naruto pleadingly. He'd spent all his money on it.

"Yes," said Neji. "She'll like it."

"Can I start to practice now?"

Neji thought. Looking at the ring seemed to have calmed him down, so Neji decided Naruto would be fine.

He was wrong (which shocked him, he'd rarely been wrong before. _But then again_, he thought, _Naruto is the exception that proves the rule_. There, that soothed his sprained ego.)

Naruto's knees had buckled out from underneath him, after which Naruto completely broke down in a crumpled heap on the ground. Even Neji felt sorry for the lump on the ground that was Naruto.

"Well, if your knees drop out on you like that while you're talking, forget the speech, you can just propose to her right then," he suggested dryly, glaring at Naruto (after all, he couldn't say that he felt sorry for him... that would be yet another blow to his pride.)

"I- can't... do this..." gasped the yellow-haired shinobi. "I just... can't- say it right! Why did I ever think I could pull this off?"

Did Neji sign up to be Naruto's coach? No. Did he want to encourage him? No. But he felt he had to. Plus, this was getting tiring and he needed to get back to training.

"Up," said Neji. "Now."

Naruto obediently got up. "Yessir."

"My house. Now. You will propose to her. Today." Neji didn't much like this. He didn't like to talk. He generally didn't do so. But today he had to act like his cousin. And as (he shuddered at the thought) cheerleader. What would TenTen say if she saw him like this? He decided to get it over with and get Naruto to Hinata as soon as possible. So he could go back to training.

"But... I can't! I can't do it! She'll never say yes!"

"She's been dating you. Why wouldn't she say yes?"

Actually, there was, in fact, a very good reason. That being Naruto was the Kyuubi... But Hinata knew that. He decided to bring this point up.

"But I'm Kyuubi!" Naruto whined, drawing out the "uu" in Kyuubi. "Who'd want to marry me?" Naruto sank down to the ground again.

"Who'd want to date you, either?" asked Neji, raising one eyebrow. "Lady Hinata does. I'm getting sick of you-" Neji kicked Naruto (not very hard), who yelled, "Ow! What was that for, huh?" and Neji, ignoring him, continued- "and I want to go back to training. So go. Now."

Naruto stood up again.

Neji stood, arms folded, towering over Naruto. "Aaaaaaaand..." He paused for dramatic effect- "If you _don't_ ask Hinata to marry you, it'll break her heart and her father and I will come after you and _hunt you down_. Got it?" He activated his Byakugan for extra dramatic effect and glared at Naruto.

Neji was quite proud of himself. Not that he wasn't usually, but today he was definitely proud of his intimidation abilities.

"Plus, of course she'll say yes," Neji continued, dropping the intimidation act (depressingly, as he kind of liked it), as it didn't seem to be getting results. He had decided to go for a more... encouraging route. Although he really wasn't very good at that. "She's only been in love with you since your Academy days. Not to mention you've been dating for a year. And you're Yondaime's son. You'll have no problems with the family. And you're all set to become the next Hokage-" Naruto stood up straighter and nodded, grinning."the Fifth even said so. So... What are you waiting for?"

Neji realized that actually wasn't that hard... He'd just needed to point out all of Naruto's good points, well, all the stuff he'd done anyway... Neji didn't really know Naruto's good points, even if Hinata had been elaborating on them for, oh, 10 years or so.

"I'm going to propose to Hinata-chan!" yelled Naruto.

"Yes," said Neji. "Now go. So I can train."

"Woohoo!" yelled Naruto.

And off he ran.

Neji returned to his training pole that he liked to beat up and Jyuuken'd it into next Tuesday.

* * *

And of course Hinata said yes to Naruto's proposal, although he did end up completely forgetting his lines and made something up on the spur of the moment. It made Hinata cry, although Naruto couldn't remember any of it later on.

* * *

"Hello... it's the end of the fic, so the girl who named her penname after a certain kitchen tool gets to talk," said Gaara, who was bored. "For some reason, she likes to make me talk. Oh, and she doesn't own Naruto." All the other Naruto characters in the background silently thanked Masashi Kishimoto. 

nEjItEnRuLeS

Neji seems OOC. Naruto doesn't (considering he's kind of dumb- much as we love him, but still... dumb- and he's about to propose to a girl. I think that would make him nervous.)

I blatantly ripped the first part of this from a scene in what is only the best movie ever.

Pride and Prejudice.

The books are better. But anyway, this came from a really funny scene. It made me laugh because the guy is practicing to talk to the girl he loves, right? And so he goes, "Hello, Miss Bennet." And his deep-voiced best friend, Mr. Darcy, goes, "Hello, Mr. Bingley."

That scene makes me laugh. It's only about one minute long, and it's mostly Bingley pacing and saying stuff to Darcy, but I thought, "Oh, what if Naruto got Neji to practice his proposal on?"

Although I kept switching from Neji's POV to Naruto's POV and I don't know if I liked that...

Please review... You get virtual cookies! Yay!  



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